


familiar

by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21922936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: “Jenny,” says Giles again, and the cat moves forward, rubbing its head against his cheek.
Relationships: Jenny Calendar/Rupert Giles
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	familiar

Giles is only halfway paying attention at Jenny’s funeral. He was asked to speak, of course, but couldn’t imagine a worse tribute to the woman he loved: anything he says to this crowd will be words meant for Jenny and Jenny alone, words he never gave to her when she was alive. _I loved you more than I believed possible. You were the wish I didn’t dare to make. You made me believe in happy endings._ Worse still is the fact that all of these thoughts are now relegated to past tense—a tense that doesn’t suit Jenny in the slightest. Bright and brave and living in the moment, Jenny was never anything other than _present._

He can’t listen to these people talk about her like they knew her. He can’t be reminded of the fact that in their last moments together, he was still treating her as though she was a stranger to him. If it had been that easy for him to cast her off, he thinks, perhaps it’s for the best that he doesn’t claim his rightful place at that microphone. Other teachers are giving him looks, expectant bordering on judging, judging bordering on contemptuous; they all know how close he and Jenny were. He’s fairly certain half the staff thinks _he’s_ the reason this funeral is happening, and he can’t entirely blame them: in a roundabout way, they are entirely correct.

Buffy steps up to the podium, eyes brimming with tears, and Giles feels a wave of revulsion. It’s not about Buffy—it’s never about Buffy, it never can be. It’s about _them,_ and what they did to Jenny out of petty spite. It’s about the fact that he and Buffy are here to make pretty speeches and talk about their holding Jenny in the highest regard, not days after Buffy turned her nose up at Jenny in the halls. This entire thing feels like a sick parody of what should really be happening: Jenny dying decades from now, her funeral crowded with family and loving friends. Giles—before now, he would have imagined himself dying first, but he could never put Jenny through the guilt and grief he feels.

(He did.)

Looking half-desperately around for something to grab his attention, Giles notices something odd: a black cat sitting on a cemetery headstone nearby. It’s overcast, and the cat is shivering, but its eyes are fixed on Buffy with a strange intensity—and as Giles continues to study it, the cat’s eyes land on him.

The cat holds his gaze for a very long time, looking at him almost thoughtfully. Noiselessly, it jumps from the headstone, weaving effortlessly through mourners without any of them seeming to really notice. It sits down in front of Giles with a note of expectant finality.

Giles feels the strangest sense of déjà vu. Awkwardly, he rummages in his pocket, trying to figure out what the cat might want from him—food, perhaps? But no, all he has is that crumpled-up speech he’d considered making for Jenny. Bitterly, he tosses it on the ground, not wanting to dwell any more upon it.

Without hesitation, the cat _pounces_ on the speech.

Giles has to bite back an indignant outburst; this is a funeral, after all, and he does wish to give Jenny this one last moment of dignity. But the cat seems to be trying to _uncrumple_ the speech, struggling a bit in its efforts. “Here,” says Giles quietly, kneeling down in the grass and smoothing out the speech. He does get scratched a few times by the insistent cat, but pain doesn’t seem to really mean anything of consequence anymore. “Is this—what you wanted?”

The cat looks intently down at the speech. Then it looks back up at Giles.

“It’s for Jenny,” says Giles. His voice catches. He doesn’t know why he’s explaining this to a _cat,_ but he’s far enough towards the back that not many others seem to have noticed what he’s doing, and the people who _have_ seem to be Pointedly Ignoring It in the way people ignore the monsters and murderers in Sunnydale. “She’s—gone, now.”

The cat cocks its head.

It seems remarkably calm for a stray, Giles thinks, and he can’t shake the sense of familiarity. “Jenny,” he says again, and the name seems to catch and hold the cat’s attention in an unusual way. “Jenny?”

“Giles?” says Buffy, and the cat _jumps._ Its claws rake neat lines through the speech as it moves quickly away from Buffy. “What—uh, _what_ are you doing? Aren’t you going to speak?”

It feels much easier for Giles to focus entirely on the cat. “I’m investigating a phenomenon, Buffy,” he says. “It may be dangerous. Stand guard.”

 _“Giles,”_ says Buffy, a touch of sympathetic exasperation in her voice. “It’s Ms. Calendar’s funeral—”

“Buffy, I’d think I’m the _last_ person on earth you would need to tell that to,” says Giles, and can’t keep the acidity out of his voice. “If you would like to properly pay your respects to Jenny, kindly _do so._ You are not in a position to question the way I choose to pay mine.”

Appropriately abashed, Buffy steps back, and he catches a returning glimmer of tears in her eyes. He can fix it later, he decides. His attention is focused on the cat. He doesn’t want to call it _Jenny_ again in front of Buffy—Buffy will come to some unwanted conclusions about either the cat or Giles’s sanity—so he settles for something else. “Monster trucks,” he says.

The cat _perks up._

Giles scoops up the cat. It doesn’t seem to mind all that much. “I’m going home,” he says to Buffy, who is looking down at the speech on the ground with a strange expression on her face. “Tell the faculty whatever you find appropriate if they ask you any questions, and if they don’t, don’t bother.”

“Giles—” Buffy’s voice breaks. _Don’t leave me here._ He sees it written in her eyes.

“I’m going home,” says Giles again. The cat’s claws are digging into his sweater vest— _possessively,_ he thinks.

* * *

On a hypothesis, Giles brews a cup of coffee at his house. The cat seems to perk up at the smell, but shies away from a small saucer of coffee when he places one down. “Right,” says Giles awkwardly. “You’re a-a cat. You wouldn’t be able to—” Not wanting to finish that sentence, he busies himself with taking the coffee away and replacing it with water. The cat seems happy enough with this.

He’s going insane, he thinks. But it’s better than being at that funeral. Sitting down at one of the barstools, he rests his chin on his forearms, watching the cat lap at the saucer on the counter. “Jenny,” he says. Again, the cat freezes. “Jenny?”

The cat gives him an almost reproachful look.

“Right,” says Giles. “I suppose we’ve—clarified that point. Um—”

The cat goes back to lapping delicately at the water.

“Could you _possibly_ make this a bit easier for me?” says Giles. “This isn’t exactly a normal occurrence.”

The cat doesn’t look up.

Giles is almost afraid to admit what he is beginning to hypothesize. The moment he pursues his theory is the moment he will be forced to come to terms with—with a lot of things, he thinks. What grief is doing to him. What he has done to Jenny. What he has lost through his own callousness and carelessness. Better to shut it all away, perhaps—

The cat stops drinking. Quietly, it takes a few steps across the counter, then gently headbutts Giles, who feels a surprised rush of warmth. When he moves back, it’s looking steadily up at him, still with that same expectant expression.

“What am I missing?” he says softly. “You want something from me, I’m sure. You’re an unusually cooperative cat, considering this is the first time we’ve met—”

The cat gives him another Look.

“No, we’ve met before,” says Giles. His stomach turns. This is coming uncomfortably close to the theory he doesn’t want to admit he has. “We’ve met, and you seem to have a good impression of me. Surprising, considering the man I am—”

The cat meows, and the cadence of its tone—irritated and warm—reminds Giles of Jenny’s own annoyed voice saying _oh, give it a rest, Rupert!_ He smiles, and only much later will he realize that this is the first time he has really smiled since Jenny’s death. “Fair enough,” he says. “I’ll lay off the self-flagellation for now.”

Satisfied with this, the cat sits down in front of Giles, still clearly waiting for _something._

“Jenny,” says Giles again, and the cat moves forward, rubbing its head against his cheek. A memory comes back to him, faint and fragmented—he is out on the porch of Jenny’s house, and she’s laughing. Her dark hair is blowing about in the wind, and it’s cold, and she’s saying _oh, sweetheart, come inside,_ but she’s not quite talking to him. Who is she talking to?

All of his memories of Jenny have been locked away since he found her dark hair spilled across his pillow, head tilted at that terrible angle. He can’t remember anything without remembering that stark, brutal image. He can’t listen to _La Bohème_ without feeling sick. Giles shakes himself, casting the memory out.

* * *

The cat stays on, even though Giles gives it plenty of opportunities to leave. He supposes it’s a good thing. Outdoor pets never last long in this town. After a week or two, he begins to keep the cat indoors. Buys it a food bowl and a scratching post and a bed, but every night, it goes to curl up in the exact spot he found Jenny’s body. He himself can’t sleep up there—he’s set up a makeshift bed on the couch, though he disassembles it each morning just in case the children drop by—and it strikes him as strange that the cat seems to know _exactly_ where Jenny was.

(Did she die here, then? The coroners said she’d been hours dead before Giles himself arrived—and yet that doesn’t eliminate the possibility of Angelus finding her in his apartment. Did he force her up there, to the bed? Wrap those pale hands around her neck and _twist?_ And yet she’d looked so peaceful on the pristine bedsheets—)

Giles lies awake at night, unable to intrude on the cat in his bedroom. When he dreams, it is always of Jenny, and the hardest ones to wake up from aren’t the nightmares.

* * *

_(He is out on the porch of Jenny’s house, and she’s laughing. Her dark hair is blowing about in the wind, and it’s cold. “Isn’t she a darling?” she says, leaning down to pet the black cat at her feet. It purrs, a loud, happy rumble, and winds companionably around her legs. “She’s a prowler, but I’ve always got a bowl for her when she comes home. My best girl.”_

_Giles attempts to stifle the impulse to say something rather sappy and ridiculous. He doesn’t actually manage to do it. “I rather think you’re quite lovely yourself, Jenny,” he says. “Kind enough to nourish those who need it.”_

_“You are so goddamn dramatic,” says Jenny, grinning up at him. “All I do is buy her some dry food from the pet section! I could wipe my muddy shoes off on the mat and you’d say that counts as cleaning my house.”_

_“I would not say that,” says Giles. “I think that that would be encouraging you. Your house is a disorganized mess.”_

_“Not all of us have our lives alphabetically organized,” says Jenny, and stretches out a hand to him, wiggling her fingers. He catches it, tugging her close and into his arms, and she nestles herself against him with a happy sigh. “God, it’s cold,” she says. “Too cold for California.”_

_“Mm.” Giles bundles her closer, resting a hand on the small of her back. She tucks her face into his chest. “Warmer now?”_

_“Warmer now,” Jenny affirms._

_The sun’s almost down, but they don’t have to go inside just yet. They’ll keep each other safe.)_

**Author's Note:**

> GOSH, it's been a while. nanowrimo ended up devoting me wholly to a sloppily-top-secret project (i talk about it a lot over on my tumblr @jenny-calendar) and as such, i have not been posting any fic up till now! but i've tabled said project for the holidays, and i hope i will be posting more frequent, shorter things for at least a little while.


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